


Bad Wolf and the Oncoming Storm (Or Why the Doctor is in Love With Rose Tyler)

by tomatopudding



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-15
Updated: 2011-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-26 03:13:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomatopudding/pseuds/tomatopudding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a position essay I wrote for my Intro to Composition class. It ended up being too long and I had to maim it in order to get to the 1,000 word limit. This is the uncut version. Spoilers for seasons 1 through 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Wolf and the Oncoming Storm (Or Why the Doctor is in Love With Rose Tyler)

Ever since it was first aired in 1963, the science fiction show _Doctor Who_ has entertained the population of Britain. The show follows the adventures of a mysterious alien called the Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. The Doctor travels through time and space in his ship called a TARDIS -- Time and Relative Dimension in Space -- which is stuck looking like a police public call box from the 1950s. People were enthralled by this character who is so human and yet is obviously not. When the Doctor’s ability to regenerate instead of dying was introduced, allowing more than one actor to play the now-iconic role, it added a whole new dimension to the Doctor’s identity. When it comes to the Doctor, everyone remembers their first and everyone remembers their favorite.

In 2005, _Doctor Who_ returned to British television. With a new home in Cardiff, Wales, and a new face, the Doctor drew in and delighted a new generation of Whovians. Along with Christopher Eccleston’s ( _Jude, Heroes_ ) rough and tumble Doctor, we meet Rose Tyler, played by the lovely Billie Piper ( _Secret Diary of a Call Girl, The Calcium Kid_ ). As the first season goes on, Rose and the Doctor’s relationship grows. Then, the Doctor regenerates into David Tennant ( _Casanova, Takin’ Over the Asylum_ ) and he and Rose must start again. The second season sees them figure things out quickly and pick up where they left off. By the time Rose is pulled into a parallel universe at the end of season two, one thing is for certain: Rose Tyler is in love with the Doctor and the Doctor truly loves her back.

We begin the return of _Doctor Who_ by being introduced to the mundane life of nineteen-year-old Rose Tyler. She has a loving boyfriend and a steady, if boring, job at a department store in London. Until, one day the mannequins try to kill her. She is saved by a strange man with a Northern accent who grabs her hand, tells her “run for your life” and proceeds to blow up her job. What follows next a whirlwind of adventures and a blossoming love. The first season is all about how Rose changes the Doctor. In the beginning he is brooding and stoic, quick to pick up a gun. By the time the season ends, he refuses to bear arms and sacrifices himself to save her.

There are many small moments throughout the entire season that show the Doctor’s growing affection for his new companion. He is always taking every opportunity to hold her hand and there is a moment where he looks into her eyes and says “I’m so glad I met you” and you know that, if this was a chick flick or made for TV movie, they would be making out like crazy. The Doctor also cannot say no to Rose. When she expresses a desire to go back in time and see her father before he died, the Doctor is quick to agree to do it, even though he knows that the consequences could be dire. He cares for her more than he lets on and in episode five, “World War Three”, he is reluctant to take a measure that will save them simply because, “I could save the world...but lose you.”

The Doctor is very jealous when Rose meets an attractive man. In the sixth episode, “Dalek”, when Rose asks if a young man named Adam can travel with them, the Doctor says grumpily, “He is a bit pretty.” Before agreeing, despite his feelings on the matter. Adam, however, doesn’t last more than a single episode because as well as being a bit pretty he’s also a bit thick. In episode nine, “The Empty Child”, we are introduced to American Captain Jack Harkness, a handsome conman from the future who is back in 1941 and sweeps Rose off her feet. Needless to say, the Doctor is not amused. In “The Empty Child” and the second episode of the story line “The Doctor Dances," Jack and the Doctor butt heads and have a rather put-them-on-the-table-and-measure-them sort of relationship. Although he doesn’t openly admit it, the Doctor suffers a bit of “sonic envy” when he must reveal that, unlike Jack’s weapon which “can function as a sonic blaster, a sonic cannon, and a triple-enfolded sonic disrupter” the Doctor simply has a sonic screwdriver. At the end of the episode, the Doctor again shows a disregard for his own feelings when it comes to what Rose wants. He saves Jack from a German bomb the Captain has placed in stasis and welcomes the American aboard the TARDIS crew simply because Rose asked him to.

The two-part season finale comprised of “Bad Wolf” and “The Parting of the Ways” shows the return of the Daleks and the culmination of a season-long story arc about the words Bad Wolf, which have been appearing ever since the third episode. When it looks like things are lost, the Doctor puts Rose on the TARDIS and initiates an emergency protocol that sends her back to her own time. Rose is not happy about this and decides to look into the heart of the TARDIS in order to learn how to fly the semi-sentient time machine back to the Doctor. Looking into the TARDIS’s heart causes Rose to absorb the Time Vortex and she becomes Bad Wolf, revealing that she has spread the words throughout time and space in order to bring the Doctor to the place where he is now. After destroying the Dalek armada with a single word, Bad Wolf is shown to be in pain; the Time Vortex is too much for Rose’s human brain to handle. She is dying. The Doctor sacrifices himself to save her, drawing the Time Vortex into himself. The fact that he does this by breaking the tension and finally kissing Rose is an added bonus. Rose has been saved, but the Doctor has not. He regenerates before his companion’s eyes.

“The second series of _Doctor Who_ ,” writes Steven Lloyd Wilson, “is at its heart a love story, telling not just the story of how Rose and the Doctor fall in love, but various other love stories that intersect with and illuminate the central relationship.” In the second season, the Doctor has newly regenerated and is, in a sense, a whole new person. His mannerisms and personality are so very different from the previous incarnation that it takes Rose a little bit of time to warm up to him. Once they reconnect, however, it’s business as usual as, like in the first season, the Doctor takes every chance he can to hold Rose’s hand. Like any good love story, this season includes a side love interest for each character. Rose’s comes in the form of Mickey, who is still very much in love with her despite the fact that she chooses the Doctor every time, and the Doctor finds his time line inexplicably entwined briefly with the life of Madame de Pompadour. Despite these asides, it becomes apparent that it takes more than a passing fancy to separate the Doctor and Rose.

There are a few moments when the Doctor’s true feeling for his companion shine through in his words and actions. One crucial moment is in the ninth episode of the season, “The Satan Pit.” This episode is the second in a pair and, through the course of the story, the Doctor has managed to get trapped underground with a crewmember of the space station they landed on. Right before repelling into a seemingly bottomless pit in the planet’s core, the Doctor says to the crew woman, “If you talk to Rose...tell her,” he pauses for a long moment and you can see the indecision in his eyes, “Oh, she knows,” he finally concludes.

There are multiple times throughout the season where the Doctor appears to be losing hope, but gains a second wind as soon as he sees Rose is in trouble. It is also proven again that the Doctor cannot say no to Rose, despite the consequences, and will always follow her even when his other companion, Rose’s ex boyfriend and best friend Mickey, could be in an equal amount of danger. Mickey ends up staying in a parallel universe, called Pete’s World because Rose’s father Pete is still alive, to help with the Cyberman invasion. He stays because he knows that Rose is no longer his to love.

The end of the second season is one of the most heart-breaking moments in television. The final story line is a pair of episodes, which result in a climactic showdown between the Doctor and two of his oldest and greatest enemies, the Daleks and the Cybermen. A select few Daleks survived their confrontation with Bad Wolf and are planning on bringing a new Dalek empire to Earth, while the Cybermen have found a way through from the parallel universe. In the end, the Doctor finds a way to draw the Cybermen and Daleks into the Void, a space of nothingness between universes. Rose loses her grip on the anchor that is keeping her in place and almost falls into the Void herself. She is saved in the last moment by her father, who takes her to Pete’s World. Unfortunately, the portal between the universes has been closed forever. The scene ends in a beautiful and heart-breaking shot of the Doctor and Rose on either side of a plain white wall, pressed against it. Rose’s cheeks are wet with tears.

In the parallel universe, Rose keeps hearing the Doctor’s voice in her head and she, along with Mickey and her parents, follow it until they get to a beach called Bad Wolf Bay. There, an image of the Doctor appears. He reveals that he has his TARDIS orbiting around a sun, killing the star just so he can speak with her again. He doesn’t have much time. “I love you,” Rose reveals through her sobs. “Quite right, too,” the Doctor replies with a watery smile, “And I suppose...if it’s my last chance to say it...Rose Tyler...” The Doctor’s image fades before he can complete the sentence. We cut back to the TARDIS and see the Doctor looking devastated, a single tear rolling down his right cheek. This is the first time we have ever seen the Doctor cry.

Throughout the entirety of the third and fourth seasons, there are many mentions of Rose Tyler. The Doctor is reluctant to get too close to his new companions: Martha Jones in season three, played by Freema Agyeman ( _Crossroads, Law and Order: UK_ ), and Donna Noble in season four, played by Catherine Tate ( _Wild West, The Catherine Tate Show_ ). He refuses to allow himself to fall for someone the way he did for Rose. He even expressly tells Donna that he just wants “a mate” -- British slang for friend -- and will not let her come with him if she will just fall in love with him the way Martha had. Donna’s vehement refusal (“I’m not having any of that nonsense”) convinces the Doctor to welcome her aboard. The biggest piece of evidence supporting the Doctor’s love for Rose actually comes into play at the end of season four, two seasons after Rose’s departure. A series of events results in the accidental creation of a second Doctor, who will be referred to as the Duplicate. It is important to note that this version of the Doctor is exactly the same as the original, down to the very last memory, including the time he and Rose spent together. The only thing that is different is that the Duplicate is completely human with one heart and can age. Other characters as well as the Duplicate himself emphasize this fact.

At the end of the last episode of the season, the Doctor takes Rose back to the parallel universe and tells her that the Duplicate is the same as he was in his previous incarnation -- born in war. The Duplicate needs Rose to help him the way she helped the Doctor. Before he leaves, Rose asks the Doctor what he was going to say to her the last time they parted. The Doctor replies, “It doesn’t need saying.” Rose then turns to the Duplicate and asks, “And you, Doctor?” The Duplicate leans close and, although his mouth is hidden from sight, it is easy to see by the movement of his chin that he says, “I love you.” Remember, the Duplicate is exactly the same as the Doctor in almost every respect. It is quite obvious what this implies. The Doctor is close to tears as he returns to the TARDIS, leaving Rose for the last time. This is the perfect example of the cliché idiom “If you love something, let it go.”

In a perfect world, the Doctor and Rose would live happily ever after, traveling together for all of time. The world, however, is not perfect, especially if you are a 900+-year-old Time Lord. “The Doctor learned from his travels throughout the universe that love comes in many forms,” writes Donna Marie Smith in her essay “Why the Doctor and Rose Kant Be Together”, “The ancient Greeks divided love into three different forms...the Doctor forges both a special fondness, or _philia_ , with Rose and a deep romantic attachment to and desire for her, what the Greeks would describe as _eros_.” Despite this seeming confirmation of the Doctor’s love for Rose, Smith continues on to write about how, according to the teachings of German philosopher Immanuel Kant, a relationship between the Doctor and Rose could never last. “The more the Doctor and Rose love each other, the greater the risk of experiencing personal loss of their love, according to Kant, comes into conflict with their moral duty.”

Kant’s teachings say that the Doctor and Rose would have to choose what they “ought” or “ought not” to do morally, regardless of their personal feelings. “They sacrifice their personal desires because...this is the right path for them to take.” In other words, the Doctor and Rose could never truly be together because they would always be on the side of the greater good rather than their emotions. This view may be supported in some places by the Doctor, as he often puts his own feelings on the back burner -- even if he does it for Rose rather than the greater good -- but Rose does not follow Kant’s theories. In fact, it is her love for the Doctor that causes her to stay with him to save the world at the end of season two and find a way to get back to him at the end of season four. Rose works in the opposite way of what Kant proposes.

________________________

Works Cited

\- _Doctor Who 2005+ Transcripts_. 8 July 2008. Web.

\- Smith, Donna Marie. "Why the Doctor and Rose Tyler Kant Be Together." _Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside_. Chicago: Carus, 2010. 167-76. Print.

\- Wilson, Stephen Lloyd. "Love and Monsters." _Pajiba_. 3 June 2009. Web.


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